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Plainsman1963

Plains Note: I hope this hasn't been posted before, it is a bit old but a search didn't pull it up. I am always fascinated by the ONDCP and their actions.

The government has yet to prove that its $200 million-a-year media campaign is effective, leading to all sorts of carping.

NEWS ANALYSIS |David Kiley | 10-5-2004

The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy on Oct. 4 chose a new advertising agency, Foote Cone & Belding, to lead its $200 million-per-year anti-drug advertising effort aimed at parents and children. The previous agency, Ogilvy & Mather, was accused of overbilling the government, but that's hardly the only controversy dogging the government's six-year-old anti-drug ad effort. Advertisement

The ONDCP, headed by federal drug czar John Walters, spends its ad budget buying time, space, and public-relation services for anti-drug ads and promotions warning youngsters about the ills of pot, ecstasy, glue-sniffing, and other such substances. The agency also urges parents to monitor kids for drug use. For each ad paid the ONDCP buys with tax dollars, media companies contribute a matching ad.

It sounds like a public-service "slam dunk" in current Beltway-speak, but the General Accounting Office and Congress are studying whether any link can be made between the ads and declining drug use. So far, the only study that tried to assess this found no connection and concluded that the campaign may actually backfire: The more ads some kids see, the more likely they are to try pot.

Now that the review for a new ad agency is over, the ONDCP plans to look for a new research firm to study and track parents and children who are exposed to the ads. In the case of parents, researchers will look for evidence that those who see the ads are more likely to have "the talk" with their children about the dangers of taking drugs.

That research for the past five years has been led by the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. Friction has arisen between the ONDCP and the researchers, however, since the Annenberg School hasn't been able to find a link between seeing the ads and declining drug use -- which the White House is seeking to justify re-funding the effort.

Walters is convinced, based on other indicators, that it's a worthy campaign. "Fewer teens are using drugs because of the deliberate and serious messages they have received about the dangers of drugs from their parents, leaders, and prevention efforts like our National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign," he says, pointing to a Health & Human Services Dept. survey showing an overall 11% decline in drug use by 8th, 10th, and 12th graders in 2002-03.


But Walters' own special assistant, David Murray, opens the door for more doubt. "We are getting great benefits, but we aren't sure we have anything to do with it," says Murray. Tobacco and alcohol consumption have fallen among teens, too, but the ONDCP campaign doesn't address smoking or alcohol.

Murray adds, however, that teasing out the media campaign's contribution to national drug-use trends is "extraordinarily tough...and no one is held to that standard in any other government program." Murray termed the previous five-year tracking study directed by the Annenberg School as "Rube Goldberg."

Robert C. Hornik, who directed the study for the school until last January, contends it "was the results [the government] didn't like," not the study or its methodology. He points out that the ONDCP approved Annenberg's methodology. Furthermore, he notes, the agency didn't dispute the study's finding that parents exposed to the ads were more likely to talk to their kids about drug use and more closely monitor their behavior. The reason? "That finding was what they were looking for," says Hornik.


The ONDCP got into anti-drug marketing after private media companies cut back on the number of free public-service ads they do. The ONDCP lobbied for funds to go commercial in 1997 after then-crug czar Barry McCaffrey became incensed over a medical-Marijuana ballot initiative that passed in California.

However, the campaign's often-political undertones have repeatedly stoked controversy. McCaffrey, for instance, got into trouble for allowing, without telling Congress, TV stations to provide their advertising match with anti-drug story lines in shows such as ER instead of actual ads. The public wasn't informed that the stories were indirectly influenced by a financial commitment from the White House, and legislators who backed the program were incensed.

The campaign was further politicized in 2002 when the ONDCP stated its intent to run $96 million in ads during and just after the midterm election. The ads' main focus is anti-Marijuana messages aimed at state ballot initiatives for drug-policy reform. Such direct intervention in state politics drew fire from both Democrats and Republicans.


Despite the controversy, Walters shows little sign of backing down. He has made it clear in speeches that he plans to continue using the power of his office to defeat state drug-policy reform initiatives. And last year, the bill to reauthorize $1 billion in public money as part of the $2 billion five-year campaign was derailed in the Senate after the GOP leadership slipped vague language into the bill that could have allowed the ONDCP to target specific political candidates not in sync with White House drug policy.

Politics aside, Bob Deniston, deputy director of the ONDCP campaign, says he believes a new tracking study will validate the ads and a change in creative strategy that began in 2002, which the new ad agency is expected to support. The latest ads aimed at youngsters, created by several ad agencies under the direction of the Partnership for a Drug-Free America, shift from depicting damage self-inflicted by Marijuana and chemical inhalants (i.e. a brain-damaged teenager being fed baby food by his mother) to depicting accountability and consequence.

One ad shows stoned teenagers running down a kid on a bike. "Young kids think they are invulnerable [to hurting themselves]...so we are targeting their view of the world," says Deniston. The big questions now: Will the White House buy into that notion? And how many people will believe the new studies when they come out?

Kiley is Marketing editor for BusinessWeek in New York
Edited by Thane Peterson

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"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards." - Claire Wolfe

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NeoArcadian

In my experience...

These adds only hurt their cause.

Every person, marijuana smoking or not, makes fun of them and everybody I know that does smoke pot all are enraged by them for spreading "Misinformation." The adds all show something a normal stoner wouldn't do like baby sitting or holding a gun.

They all spread "Misinformation" about marijuana and that is their main drug of choice for bad-mouthing. I can't stand them. I'll be sitting in my living room watching TV with my mom and one will come on. Then for the next fifteen minutes I'll spout out about how the add is wrong and multiple other things about drug facts.

I'd have to say that in the desision of whether or not I would start smoking was not at all influenced by those commercials. If anything they just drove me to smoking, pot, that is.

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"Hammered like a blacksmith, Stoned like a mountain." ME.

kevstermon

So far, the only study that tried to assess this found no connection and concluded that the campaign may actually backfire: The more ads some kids see, the more likely they are to try pot

This is unintended consequence. Thats what foolishness usually gets you.

knifer420

Anti drug ads are a huge waste of money and time. An alcoholic is more likely to kill someone than a pothead is. Pot has many medicinal purposes and is alot safer on the body than alcohol. If any commercials should be aired, they should be about drinking and driving.